I can’t begin to tell you about the stunning and, more importantly, world-changing idea I had for a column this week.
But, alas, my daughter Jessica’s whose 6,000-word (OK, it was 600) column violated our unofficial word length rule, and forced me to shorten this column.
Reducing my space meant less room to expand on my column idea, which unfortunately now escapes me.
As I mentioned in earlier columns, I followed my father and brother in this newspapering business.
I had a go of it with computers laying out this week’s paper – Jessica’s War and Peace-long column really didn’t play a part in my woes.
I brought up my dad because his layout job was a whole lot different than mine.
His was the day of hot type where all of the news text came from lead type, or slugs, from a linotype machine.
That type was lined up, with headlines and photos reproduced atop wooden squares within a steel square that held the entire newspaper page.
A major catastrophe occurred when that steel page, if you will, was dropped en route to the press.
That sent thousands of pieces across the floors and under the type cases – containing the different fonts used in news and advertising - that lined the composing room walls.
I heard a steady stream of cuss words that accompanied the screams of agony.
In comparison, my fit today over a missing digital file would have been both a thing of marvel and a contemptuous dismissal of something nowhere equal to the hours-long search for lead words.
I might add that proof reading – before that steel square was locked down – was comprised of temporarily securing a news story or advertisement in a metal plate for a galley proof that was inked and rolled over to produce a small page of copy.
Mistakes found at that stage required another trip to the linotype.
I worked at the paper in my junior high years feeding the empty pages onto the wooden forks that laid the pages on top of the type.
That was modern newspapers in those years – actually the very end of hot type that gave way to offset printing.
That was the “press,” literally.
All forms of jobs today had their own evolution of technology.
I suppose at my age, all this makes me realize I’ve witnessed my own industrial revolution.
